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Thursday, December 6, 2012

ABANDONED THEATER: The Case for The Master

Paul
Thomas Anderson is the sort of artist that attracts obsessed fans. Artists with
distinct styles—whether they are musicians, painters, or, as in this case,
filmmakers—are the sort of people to develop these cults. The Church of Paul
Thomas Anderson began with his debut--Hard
Eight or Sydney, depending on who
you ask—but it exploded with the stylistic Boogie
Nights and the ambitious Magnolia.
With his most recent films, he focuses his narratives to one or two main
characters, moving away from the huge ensembles that were his forte. The cast
of characters that front his 2000s films are cults of personality in their own
right: pudding-obsessed Barry Egan in Punch-Drunk
Love (Adam Sandler), oil tycoon Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (Daniel Day-Lewis), and now wandering sailor
Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) and cult leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour
Hoffman) in The Master.

With The Master, Paul Thomas Anderson has
made his most divisive film yet. The unanimous critical success and numerous
award nominations and wins of There Will
Be Blood made it seem as if could do no wrong. When The Master started rolling out its trailers, Anderson’s cult had
already heralded the film a masterpiece. It wasn’t hard to see why. The trailers
were masterfully cut, with tense close-ups of Phoenix, in-character, babbling
channeled intensity. When the film was
released, however, opinion divided. There was a love camp and a hate camp.
Those in between were merely confounded by the film. Now, according to Rotten
Tomatoes, The Master sits pretty at 85%
positive reviews. But the backlash came quickly among the internet world and
film-goers. The Master opened to
record numbers when it screened, but when it grew into a wider release, the
film bombed, becoming one of Anderson’s least-grossing films. The once
predicted favorite for awards time had become an awards black sheep to prognosticators.
Many claim the film is now overrated and already-forgotten. Those still
championing the film were now labeled part of Paul Thomas Anderson’s cult, and
written-off.

So is The Master great, shit, or something in
between?

For the
reasons outlined here, The Master is
a masterpiece, unequaled in 2012[i], and
also Paul Thomas Anderson’s best film to date.

Am I, dear reader, a part of his cult? That is for you
to decide. I welcome the debate.

Firstly,
Paul Thomas Anderson has worked with Director of Photography (DP) Robert Elswit
from Hard Eight to There Will Be Blood, the last of which
deservedly earning Elswit a Cinematography Oscar through his masterful creation
of stark landscapes for Daniel Plainview’s oilfields. Now, Anderson is working
with a new DP: Mihai Malaimare Jr. Malaimare creates, while shooting in 70mm,
luscious recreations of post-war America[ii] for
Freddie Quell to wander aimlessly through. Whether Malaimare is shooting a
close-up of Freddie’s scarred and crevassed face, or shooting Freddie running
through a cabbage field, or Freddie and Lancaster Dodd riding their motorcycles
in the desert, the scenes are simultaneously vast and claustrophobic. This
contradiction leads to the film’s biggest knock: it is too vague.

The Master is full of contradictions and hazy
plotting. Freddie’s story seems to be going one direction, but his
misadventures never come to fruition. He seems to represent the monster, while
Lancaster seems to represent the lion tamer. But then at times their roles
ambiguously shift, where Freddie seems to be the one in control. What is the
point of this? Why are the characters static? Why does nothing happen?!?

The
answers are actually rather simple: the film is not about revelations but about
lack of revelations. Also, the muddied plot is a mirror of Freddie Quell and an
example of form fitting function. In There
Will Be Blood, the focused narrative derived from Daniel Plainview’s
obsessive focus. Anderson has proved he can make that movie. In ways, The Master is the opposite of There Will Be Blood. Instead of writing and
directing a film about a Daniel Plainview, the wandering, lost Freddie Quell is
our wedge into the story, however frustrating a fact that may be to some
viewers. Aided only by a constantly forward-churning score by Radiohead’s
Johnny Greenwood, Anderson is following the most elusive big screen character
of 2012. And people are infuriated by this.

Focused
narrative is oftentimes necessary to keep the attention of most film-goers,
whether they are critical or casual. That makes Argo a big hit. And Lincoln.
And There Will Be Blood back in 2007.
Some films are meant to be contemplative, such as The Seventh Seal. Superhero films are meant to be bombastically
action-packed, like The Avengers. Some
films are meant to be light fun, such as The
Artist. Anything but being a wandering mess would have hindered The Master, because as-is, it perfectly
depicts the sort of post-war feeling of a WWII solider. Again, form fits
function. Freddie was in the navy, mixing more and more dangerous cocktails for
himself and his fellow soldiers. He lived a sex-obsessed bachelor’s life,
recognizing that he was missing the basic foundation of human existence. He
misses his sweetheart, the love of his life, because he made the choice to be
in the Navy serving the good ole U.S. of A. One of the film’s best scenes, Lancaster
Dodd asks Freddie a series of questions (which The Cause calls Processing) that
penetrate into Freddie’s soul. The film slows its pace here, and Milaimare’s
close-ups of Freddie and Lancaster illustrate their intensity and focus as
Freddie has to stop living like a vagabond and anchor himself for at least a
moment, long enough to admit the sexual abuse—even though he “liked” it—that he
had been through at a young age. These
details tell the viewers about Freddie’s life. They may continue in their disgust
of Freddie’s actions, but the reasons behind them become clear here.

And those
reasons should not be forgotten as the film continues, and Freddie shifts in
and out of his violent and lustful urges. He wants to fuck everyone in sight. He
sits, imagining the women at a party naked, as if nothing is strange. But he
also does his best to be a part of The Cause, continuing to fail time after
time to fit in. He violently defends Lancaster from the man’s only son, from
the police, from those who doubt The Cause. Lancaster does not put up with
this, yet he tries to tame the beast. He puts him through test after test, making
Freddie to pace back and forth like a tiger behind bars at the zoo, all the
while not realizing the utter futility of his indoctrination. Religion, whether
it is Scientology or Christianity, cannot lasso a man as wild and
individualistic as Freddie, for better or for worse. Just like love, or home,
Freddie is without faith. He will never have it.

This
works because of the performances of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and
especially Joaquin Phoenix. Adams is subtle and powerful. Hoffman is able to teeter
between explosive anger to gentle family man to charismatic leader at the drop
of a hat, without the hint of breaking character. And then there is Joaquin
Phoenix, who embodies his character—the twisted, individualistic beast that is
Freddie Quell—in a league of his own year. Daniel Day-Lewis redefines Lincoln
by inhabiting the historic figure, but Phoenix creates an entire new character
from Paul Thomas Anderson’s screenplay and his own mind. Phoenix lost weight.
He developed a gait to how he walked, completely contrasting the way he usually
walks. He is consistently hunched and craven. He changed the appearance of his
face based on pure will. Some critics have accused Phoenix of playing himself. But
that is ridiculous: he doesn’t look himself here. Watching Gladiator or Walk The Line
will show how different this character is from the rest of his repertoire.

Freddie
is not a great person—in ways he can be a monstrous figure. But he is more identifiable
than Daniel Plainview was in There Will
Be Blood. He is simple in his desires to live out his role as the “id”
compared to Dodd’s “super ego”[iii], but
his origins are where his complexities lie. Why does he fail to connect fully
with The Cause? Why did the war or his past sexual encounters lead him to be
such an aimless man? Freddie doesn’t
ever find the answers that satisfy him, which may frustrate the viewer, but it
is true to his character. One positive impact Freddie the character has is that
he is the force that dictates the tempo of the movie’s rhythms, only quelled by
Johnny Greenwood’s potentially award winning score of clarinets and strings
that simultaneously accent Freddie and work against him. Again, The
Master is full of contradictions that dance with one another to dizzying effect.

So The Master has some of the best
performances of the year. It has elite cinematography, score, production
design, and costuming. The screenplay will likely be nominated for Best Original
Screenplay at the Oscars based on its ambitious linking of its pacing to its
protagonist? Is the stance against The
Master based on the misconception that it does not have a plot—a beginning,
middle end, climax, denouement?

There is
actually a climax of the film, and a denouement, regardless of some criticism
to the contrary. Freddie chooses not to be a part of The Cause, and is cursed
to continue wandering. Religion is not for him, nothing probably is, since no
one can truly understand him after the war. He connected with Lancaster Dodd,
loved him even, but he is not a member of his cause. After Freddie tries to
take his fate, and drives away Dodd’s Cause on the motorcycle, he finds that
there is still no world for him. So he continues his wandering, and dreams of Dodd.
When he finally meets The Master again, he sees that The Cause has taken off,
and it is not for him, with its walls and amazing thrones[iv] that
The Master sits upon. In their final confrontation, which plays more like a
weepy goodbye[v],
the two recognize that they are stark opposites. Dodd muses that in future
lives, according to his religion, they will be grand enemies, forever and ever.
This seems silly, and it is, but it is his ardent belief and he believes it. Freddie’s
opinion is more ambiguous, but he certainly leaves the church. As he continues
his meanderings, probably forever. He eventually stumbles upon and sleeps with
a woman while in England. He repeats those once sacred Processing techniques during
intercourse as a way to get off, though he may be using it earnestly, the
heresy is evident by his final sacrilegious line: “It fell out!” laughing, referring
to his penis during sex.

And there
you have it. Freddie Quell finds his calling: scatological humorist.

I give The
Master 10 out of 10.

[i]I have not seen
the following critically adored films, because they have now shown where I
live: Zero Dark Thirty, Les Miserables, The
Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey, Django Unchained, Amour, or Holy Motors. I want to see them all,
obviously, and plan to as soon as I can. Expect reviews in the coming weeks.

[ii]Production Design
(David Crank, Jack Fisk) and Costuming (Mark Bridges) are top notch here as
well. This film takes place in the 1950s and is true to its time period. There
is not a detail that feels out of place and the details accumulate to a
masterfully to allow the actors to feel real to those watching the film.

[iii]Or is Dodd the ego
and his wife the super ego? Oh these questions are the stuff that great
after-movie conversations are made of.

[iv]Appropriate that
the elusive Mrs. Dodd (Amy Adams) appears as a footnote here. She is the
sneaky, true leader of The Cause, acting as a Lady MacBeth, always with her
voice in Dodd’s ear. In one infamous scene, she gives Dodd a hand job while
telling him damn well what path The Cause should take. Freddie shares the same
weakness: sex. Dodd hides this, though, in public. His wife wants to make sure
of it. It should be noted that Adams is
great in this role, totally showing that many times through her career she has
been typecast as the good girl. She can play manipulative politician’s wife believability
and with master class nuance.